Music information services maintain databases of detailed information about artists, songs, albums, performances, and other music-related topics. One example of a music information service is the Gracenote CDDB Music Recognition Service. These music information services may license developers of CD players, CD burners, MP3 players and encoders, catalogers, and similar devices. The music information service allow the licensed devices or software to display artist, title, tracklist, and other music-related information that is maintained by the music information service to the user. For example, when a user plays a CD using a licensed device, the CD player software program for that device first accesses the music information service and transmits the table of contents (TOC) of the CD to the service. The CD player program accesses the music information service via a wire connection to the Internet or an Internet dial-up service. The music information service servers uses a match algorithm to check the TOC against the music information database to find one or more matches to the CD. Once the music information service has identified the CD or generated a list of matches, the CD player may display the information associated with that CD to the user or present the user with a list of matches from which to choose. As discussed above, this information may include the artist name, album title, track list, and other similar information.
Because music information services must be accessed from a wire connection or dial-up service to the Internet, the user is limited in the placement of the device to retrieve the music information service data. CD players that are not connected to the Internet must rely on cached music information service data or music information service CDs. Neither of these offline sources of information are as accurate or current as the music information service database itself. In addition, the user is unable to submit additional information or corrections to the music information service. Furthermore, users of portable CD players typically have no access to music information services at all.